KANO, Nigeria (AFP) – Five Muslim men have been charged with the murder of an elderly Christian woman over an alleged blasphemy in the north Nigerian city of Kano, police said on Friday.
The suspects are accused, along with six others who are still at large, of killing 74-year-old Bridget Abahime last week after she allegedly insulted Islam’s holiest figure, the Prophet Mohammed.
All five pleaded not guilty at a magistrates court in the city and were remanded in custody pending another hearing on June 28.
The victim, an ethnic Igbo trader, was beaten to death at a Kano market on June 2, drawing condemnation from across Nigeria. President Muhammadu Buhari called the killing “utterly condemnable”.
Northern Nigeria is predominantly Muslim while the south is largely Christian and Kano city has been blighted by religious violence in the past.
In one notorious case in 1996 a trader, also an ethnic Igbo Christian from the southeast, was beheaded by suspected Muslims youths who accused him of desecrating the Koran.
His severed head was then hoisted on a spike and paraded around the city.
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